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Very interesting choice. I work on mission critical systems that aren't as mission critical as nuclear submarines. I don't think we'd ever consider anything oth

by vostok 10y ago

Very interesting choice. I work on mission critical systems that aren't as mission critical as nuclear submarines. I don't think we'd ever consider anything other than an open source *nix.

cperciva 10y ago
I would have expected qnx or vxworks rather than any open source UNIX personally.
- vostok 10y ago
  Fair point. When I said "mission critical systems that aren't as mission critical as nuclear submarines" I meant that a mistake can result in us losing $400 million in 30 minutes rather than the destruction of civilization as we know it. I don't know what people in the latter case use, but it sounds like they use Windows for Submarines.
  - noir_lord 10y ago
    > $400 million in 30 minutes You write systems to autoplay Free to Play games?
    - Pyxl101 10y ago
      High frequency trading, more like! Or just trading. Mistakes such as selling 610,000 shares at 1 yen, instead of 1 share at 610,000 yen. Clash of Clans only makes on the order of ~$2M-$8M per day, according to estimates, so it'd be tough for a Clash of Clans outage to cost $400M. Only when playing with money, or with equipment worth $400M can you lose that much in 30 minutes. (What kinds of equipment costs $400M and can be ruined in 30 minutes? Offshore oil rigs, I'm guessing. According to Quora, the least-expensive offshore rigs are $200M, while average is $360M. Ruining one of those with a software error would be a very bad day. Another option might be equipment in space such as satellites, though I imagine those are relatively harder to ruin.)
      - snovv_crash 10y ago
        Also think stuff like tunnel boring machines, or a dragline from a coal mine. Autopilot software for cruise liners. Power station control software. I think there is another side as well, software that may incur a liability if it fails due to loss of human life or recall costs. Eg bridge control, pharmaceutical QA, even electronic manufacturing (think Galaxy Note 7 design phase).
      - tibbetts 10y ago
        I've worked on high frequency trading software infrastructure, including having been involved in serious bugs which lead to a lot of broken trades and lost money, and would have said with anything like proper architecture and governance you can't lose $400 million in 30 minutes. But Knight Capital did manage to lose $440 million in 45 minutes, due in large part to what I would call improper architecture and governance. So there you go. https://dougseven.com/2014/04/17/knightmare-a-devops-cautionary-tale/amp/ https://dougseven.com/2014/04/17/knightmare-a-devops-caution...
      - user5994461 10y ago
        Add life-critical systems to the list. The damages/insurance/claims can be in this order of magnitude. Just need to kill enough people at once, like a big plane or a big boat or a big building. By the way, trading [should] have fail safes (i.e. stop after some amount of losses). A plane doesn't have fail safe, when the plane goes down, there is never enough parachutes =D
- ptero 10y ago
  Vxworks, IME, is the option of choice for hard real time components. For other (e.g., soft real time) critical components a solid Linux distribution works better -- smaller code, easier checks. I have seen implementations as Linux systems with a few dedicated vxworks boards for specific small components.
  - wycx 10y ago
    RTEMS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTEMS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTEMS
- ptero 10y ago
  Vxworks, IME, is the option of choice for hard real time components. For other (e.g., soft real time) critical components a solid Linux distribution works better -- smaller code, easier checks. I have seen implementations as Linux systems with a few dedicated vxworks boards for specific small components.
ksk 10y ago
Its a good thing you said open source * nix because a lot of the early commercial UNIXes were buggy and unstable. Also I hope you are not using Plan 9 or Open Solaris or MINIX or a few of the other opensource *nixes which are also not suitable. So maybe it looks like you just meant Linux? :)
- tbrownaw 10y ago
  Or one of the BSDs.
- linksnapzz 10y ago
  Unsuitable, how? Solaris has had realtime capability for fifteen years, and most recently has been the embedded OS of choice for Sun/Oracle storage appliances. plan9 not being Unix (at all) nonwithstanding, Coraid's AoE products have used plan9 as an embedded OS in the past. Certainly in the recent past, US destroyers had embedded signal-processing systems built by a well-known HPC vendor running a derivative of INRIA ChorusOS. Green Hills Software's Integrity RTOS && development environment are also quite commercial, and have many successful deployments. Any insinuation that military or embedded applications should be Linux (or Windows) deployments, or even necessarily free software, is ahistoric and, IMO, under-informed.

by vostok 10y ago

Very interesting choice. I work on mission critical systems that aren't as mission critical as nuclear submarines. I don't think we'd ever consider anything other than an open source *nix.

cperciva 10y ago

I would have expected qnx or vxworks rather than any open source UNIX personally.

vostok 10y ago
Fair point. When I said "mission critical systems that aren't as mission critical as nuclear submarines" I meant that a mistake can result in us losing $400 million in 30 minutes rather than the destruction of civilization as we know it. I don't know what people in the latter case use, but it sounds like they use Windows for Submarines.
- noir_lord 10y ago
  > $400 million in 30 minutes You write systems to autoplay Free to Play games?
  - Pyxl101 10y ago
    High frequency trading, more like! Or just trading. Mistakes such as selling 610,000 shares at 1 yen, instead of 1 share at 610,000 yen. Clash of Clans only makes on the order of ~$2M-$8M per day, according to estimates, so it'd be tough for a Clash of Clans outage to cost $400M. Only when playing with money, or with equipment worth $400M can you lose that much in 30 minutes. (What kinds of equipment costs $400M and can be ruined in 30 minutes? Offshore oil rigs, I'm guessing. According to Quora, the least-expensive offshore rigs are $200M, while average is $360M. Ruining one of those with a software error would be a very bad day. Another option might be equipment in space such as satellites, though I imagine those are relatively harder to ruin.)
    - snovv_crash 10y ago
      Also think stuff like tunnel boring machines, or a dragline from a coal mine. Autopilot software for cruise liners. Power station control software. I think there is another side as well, software that may incur a liability if it fails due to loss of human life or recall costs. Eg bridge control, pharmaceutical QA, even electronic manufacturing (think Galaxy Note 7 design phase).
    - tibbetts 10y ago
      I've worked on high frequency trading software infrastructure, including having been involved in serious bugs which lead to a lot of broken trades and lost money, and would have said with anything like proper architecture and governance you can't lose $400 million in 30 minutes. But Knight Capital did manage to lose $440 million in 45 minutes, due in large part to what I would call improper architecture and governance. So there you go. https://dougseven.com/2014/04/17/knightmare-a-devops-cautionary-tale/amp/ https://dougseven.com/2014/04/17/knightmare-a-devops-caution...
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Add life-critical systems to the list. The damages/insurance/claims can be in this order of magnitude. Just need to kill enough people at once, like a big plane or a big boat or a big building. By the way, trading [should] have fail safes (i.e. stop after some amount of losses). A plane doesn't have fail safe, when the plane goes down, there is never enough parachutes =D
ptero 10y ago
Vxworks, IME, is the option of choice for hard real time components. For other (e.g., soft real time) critical components a solid Linux distribution works better -- smaller code, easier checks. I have seen implementations as Linux systems with a few dedicated vxworks boards for specific small components.
- wycx 10y ago
  RTEMS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTEMS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTEMS
ptero 10y ago
Vxworks, IME, is the option of choice for hard real time components. For other (e.g., soft real time) critical components a solid Linux distribution works better -- smaller code, easier checks. I have seen implementations as Linux systems with a few dedicated vxworks boards for specific small components.

ksk 10y ago

Its a good thing you said open source * nix because a lot of the early commercial UNIXes were buggy and unstable. Also I hope you are not using Plan 9 or Open Solaris or MINIX or a few of the other opensource *nixes which are also not suitable. So maybe it looks like you just meant Linux? :)

tbrownaw 10y ago
Or one of the BSDs.
linksnapzz 10y ago
Unsuitable, how? Solaris has had realtime capability for fifteen years, and most recently has been the embedded OS of choice for Sun/Oracle storage appliances. plan9 not being Unix (at all) nonwithstanding, Coraid's AoE products have used plan9 as an embedded OS in the past. Certainly in the recent past, US destroyers had embedded signal-processing systems built by a well-known HPC vendor running a derivative of INRIA ChorusOS. Green Hills Software's Integrity RTOS && development environment are also quite commercial, and have many successful deployments. Any insinuation that military or embedded applications should be Linux (or Windows) deployments, or even necessarily free software, is ahistoric and, IMO, under-informed.